re: New Case for PC Gaming Build.(Posted by tom on 11/26/12 at 1:41 pm to GeauxTime9)

It's not how many fans, it's how the air flows through the case. The default setup is a cpu fan blowing hot air off the cpu heat sink, one fan in the front near the hard drives sucking air into the box and one fan in the back around the level of the cpu blowing air out.

You want the air to flow in at the front and out through the back. If you have too many fans, the air will not flow straight through. Unless you have a case completely crammed with components (crammed enough to form a barrier that air cannot easily pass through), or your CPU and video card(s) are extremely far from your airflow (they almost certainly aren't), you only need 1 intake and 1 exhaust.

My favorite airflow setup is one rear exhaust, one top exhaust, one front intake, and one side intake. They don't need to be super performance fans. Sleeve bearings with 30-50 cfm that are less than 30db at full speed. 120mm, not 80mm. Just needs a constant movement of air, not super-fast like a radiator would need.

If you're buying a high-end video card, find one with cooling that has more than one exit point for exhaust. So, pretty much any non-reference PCB card. The reference designs with the stock cooler focus on rear exhaust which actually creates more air restriction.

Another virtually silent cooling solution would be a Corsair H80 on your CPU in a push/pull configuration out the back of your case, with one additional intake and one additional exhaust using quiet 120mm fans. It will cut down on the noise of a stock CPU cooler, that's for sure. Video card's a different story. All depends on the cooler mounted on it.